The single contrast making up the whole description.
Fundamental Device.—A SINGLE CON¬TRAST. The use of contrast is one of the most com¬mon and at the same time most effective devices. It is akin to antithesis. This device is a favorite one with literary critics and historians when they wish to contrast two persons. A. MODEL. The character of Milton was peculiarly distinguished by loftiness of thought ; that of Dante by intensity of feeling. In every line of the "Divine Comedy" we dis¬cern the asperity which is produced by pride struggling with misery. There is perhaps no work in the world so deeply and uniformly sorrowful. The melancholy of Dante was no fantastic caprice. It was not, as far as at this distance of time can be judged, the effect of -exter¬nal circumstances. It was from within. Neither love nor glory, neither the conflicts of earth nor the hope of heaven could dispel it. It turned every consolation and every pleasure into its own nature. It resembled that noxious Sardinian soil of which the intense bitter- nets is said to have been perceptible even in its honey. His mind was, in the noble language of the. Hebrew poet, "a land of darkness, as darkness itself, and where the light was as darkness ! " The gloom of his char¬acter discolors all the passions of men and all the face of nature, and tinges with its own livid hue the flowers of Paradise and the glories of the eternal throne. No per¬son can look on the features, noble even to ruggedness, the dark furrows of the cheek, the haggard and woeful stare of the eye, the sullen and contemptuous curve of the lip, and doubt that they belong to a man too proud and too sensitive to be happy. Milton was, like Dante, a statesman and a lover ; and, like Dante, he had been unfortunate in ambition and in love. He had survived his health and his sight, the comforts of his home, and the prosperity of his party If ever despondency and asperity could be excused in any man, they might have been excused in Milton. But the strength of his mind over¬came every calamity. Neither blindness, nor gout, nor age, nor penury, nor domestic afflictions, nor politi¬cal disappointments, nor abuse, nor proscription, nor neglect, had power to disturb his sedate and majestic patience. His spirits do not seem to have been high, but they were singularly equable. His temper was serious, perhaps. stern ; but it was a temper which no sufferings could render sullen or fretful. Such as it was when, on the eve of great events, he returned from his travel; in the prime of health and manly beauty, loaded with literary distinctions, and glowing with pa¬triotic hopes, such it continued to be when, after having experienced every calamity which is incident to our nature, old, poor, sightless, and disgraced, he retired to his hovel to die. —THOMAS BASINGTON MACAULAY, Essay on Milton. SUGGESTIONS.—What description-motive is used in this model? Why are the persons contrasted ? What is the function of the first paragraph in this model? of the second paragraph ? What is the fundamental quality in the character of each of the persons contrasted ? Minor devices used. enumera¬tion; antithesis. B. EXAMPLE FOR ANALYSIS. A confined triangle, perhaps fifty miles its greatest length, and thirty its greatest breadth ; two elevated rocky barriers, meeting at an angle ; three prominent mountains, commanding the plain,— Parnes, Pentelicus, and Hymettus ; an unsatisfactory soil ; some streams, not always full ; — such is about the report which the agent of a London Company would have made of Attica. He would report that the climate was mild ; the hills were limestone ; there was plenty of good marble ; more pasture land than at first survey might have been expected, sufficient certainly for sheep and goats ; fish¬eries productive ; silver mines 'once, but long since worked out; figs fair ; oil first-rate ; olives in profusion. But what he would not think of noting down was, that that olive tree was so choice in nature and so noble in shape that it excited a religious veneration ; and that it took so kindly to the light soil as to expand into woods upon the open plain, and to climb up and fringe the hills He would not think of writing word to his employers how that clear air, of which I have spoken, brought out, yet blended and subdued, the colors on the marble, till they had a softness and harmony, for all their richness, which in a picture looks exaggerated, yet is, after all, within the truth. He would not tell how that same delicate and brilliant atmosphere freshened up the pale olive till the olive forgot its monotony, and its cheek glowed like the arbutus or beech of the Umbrian hills. He would say nothing of the thyme and thousand fragrant herbs which carpeted Hymettus ; he would hear nothing of the hum of its bees ; nor take much account of the rare flavor of its honey, since Gozo and Minorca were sufficient for the English demand. He would look over the YEgean from the height he had ascended ; he would follow with his eye the chain of islands, which, starting from the Sunian headland, seemed to offer the fabled divinities of Attica, when they would visit their Ionian cousins, a sort of viaduct thereto across the sea : but this thought would not occur to him, nor any admiration of the dark violet billows with their white edges down below, nor of those grace¬ful, fan-like jets of silver upon the rocks, which slowly rise aloft like water spirits from the deep, then shiver, and break, and spread, and shroud themselves, and dis¬appear, in a soft mist of foam ; nor of the gentle, inces¬sant heaving and panting of the whole liquid plain ; nor of the long waves, keeping steady time, like a line of soldiery, as they resound upon the hollow shore,— he would not deign to notice the restless -living element at all, except to bless his stars that he was not upon it Nor the distinct detail, nor the refined coloring, nor the graceful outline and roseate golden hue of the jutting crags, nor the bold shadows cast from Otus or Laurium by the declining sun ; — our agent of a mercantile firm would not value these matters even at a low figure. Rather we must turn for the sympathy we seek to yon pilgrim student, come from a semi-barbarous land to that small corner of the earth, as to a shrine, where he might take his fill of gazing on those emblems and coruscations of invisible unoriginate perfection. It was the stranger from a remote province, from Britain or from Mauritania, to whom a scene so different from that of his chilly, woody swamps, or of his fiery choking sands, would have shown him in a measure what a real university must be, by holding out to him the sort of country which was its suitable home. — JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, The Ogee and Work of Universities. SUGGESTIONS.—What description-motive is used in this quota¬tion? In this example of the use of contrast, which is the prosaic or commonplace, and which the poetic or sentimental point of view? Note the difference in sentence structure in the two descriptions. In which are the sentences longer, more complex in structure, and more rhythmical ? In which description do you find ornamenta¬tion, z e. similes, etc.? Make a list of the details used in the description from the agent's point of view ; from the poetic point of view. Which contains more of the concrete ?